Hear this, I pray you, ye heads of the house of Jacob, and princes of the house of Israel, that abhor judgment, and pervert all equity.
Ver. 9. Hear this, I pray you, ye heads, &c.] He had had a bout with them before; but because little good was thereby done, he is at them again; according to that counsel of the wise man, Ecclesiastes 11:6, "In the morning sow thy seed, in the evening withhold not thy hand: for thou knowest not," &c. "Preach the word," saith the apostle, "be instant" (or stand over the work, επιστηθι) "in season, out of season," 2 Timothy 4:2. Chrysostom told his Antiochians, that he would never give over preaching against that sin of swearing till they gave over their swearing; which, because he could not get them to do, he breaks out into these words, It will be a hard speech unto you, but I will speak it: though there be so many thousands of you, yet there cannot be found a hundred that shall be saved; and I tell you true, I doubt of them too.
Ye heads of the house of Jacob, and princes of the house of Israel] As bad as they were he gives them their titles. The devil also is to have his due; he is called by the Holy Ghost "Prince of the air," and his angels are styled "principalities, powers, rulers of the darkness of this world," Ephesians 6:12. See Trapp on " Mic 3:1 "
That abhor judgment] They were not only ignorant of it, Micah 3:1, but abhorred it; and therefore abhorred it because they knew it not. Plato could say, that if moral virtue could be beheld with mortal eyes it would attract all hearts to itself. "But these, as natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed, spake evil of those things that they understood not," 2 Peter 2:12, and "what they knew naturally, as brute beasts, in those things they corrupted themselves," Judges 1:10; being carried away by their impetuous and imperious lusts, they not only did that which was evil, but also hated the light of the law that reproved and sentenced them; licensing others by their practice, at least, to do the like. Such Centaurs and Cyclopes were these princes of Israel grown; such Heteroclites these heads of the house of Jacob. "The whole head was sick," Isaiah 1:5, the rulers were a scab, Isaiah 5:7. The Lord "looked for judgment, but behold oppression; for righteousness, but behold a cry." They had made the age not unlike that under Nero, wherein nothing almost was unlawful; but villany was acted by authority (Dio Cassius).
And pervert all equity] Heb. they pervert, &c. It is spoken to others, in token of abomination; see the like, Genesis 49:4, with the note. Now equity or rectitude is perverted, when the guilty are acquitted and the innocent condemned, see Isaiah 5:20; Isaiah 5:23, when there is accepting of persons. and receiving of gifts,